Love Is Blind star Leo Braudy’s now-infamous Rolex watch has “a hell of a story behind it.”
Leo, 31, opened up about the watch in a Thursday, October 11, TikTok video more than one week after the band first made headlines on the season 7 premiere.
“This is a 1985 Rolex Presidential Day-Date [and] I got it appraised a few months ago for insurance purposes and they told me it was worth around $15,000,” Leo explained, holding up the gilded watch. “They said it would be worth less, but there’s this, like, insignia on the back by the watchmaker, which makes it worth a little bit more.”
Leo inherited the watch from his grandfather, often wearing it as a family tribute. As mentioned in Love Is Blind season 7, Leo had previously lost both of his parents and all of his grandparents. He inherited their art dealing business. (Leo, who noted on Thursday that he looked “a—hole on the show” for bringing a Rolex, has become a controversial cast member for comments about finances, which he and costar Tyler Francis hinted were blown out of proportion.)
“It’s my fourth nicest watch, but it’s definitely my most sentimental because it’s a family heirloom,” Leo explained in his social media video. “The family story behind it — I think is pretty remarkable. A lot of the ‘Rolex talk’ in the pods was me and the guys talking about our families because a lot of us brought objects of significance with us.”
The Rolex was originally owned by Leo’s great-grandfather Morris Lefkowitz, who was born in Massachusetts in the 1900s. When Morris’ family went on a vacation to Hungary, World War I broke out.
“Morris’ father got shot in the neck and he died, leaving Morris, his siblings and his mother,” Leo explained, noting that Morris subsequently got kicked out of the family house at the age of 10. “We think he might have been an illegitimate child because was the youngest and some stuff just didn’t line up.” (Leo noted that he didn’t have all the details because Morris only told Leo’s grandmother about his familial estrangement “on his death bed.”)
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Morris had, somehow, managed to travel from Hungary to Germany to England all alone thanks to a “wealthy uncle” back in Philadelphia sending financial assistance. When Morris, by 12, secures passage on an America-bound ship, he goes to live with said uncle.
“He’s living with this wealthy uncle, who has butlers in a mansion and the whole nine yards. He also has a crazy gambling problem,” Leo recalled. “One night, he pisses all of his money away, leaving my great-grandfather Morris on his own. He drops out of middle school and he apprentices for an upholsterer, like, fixing furniture and stuff.”
Morris, a life-long-upholsterer until his death, ultimately received the watch from his children. Leo revealed that his grandparents were both poor “as mud” until finding success in the art industry when they later gifted Morris the Rolex.
“He loved it,” Leo gushed. “He would actually wear this watch with this hammer. I got this hammer for my bar mitzvah [when I was 13] and it’s the only other thing I have from him. All the paintings that I hang for myself in my home, I do it with my great-grandfather’s hammer.”
Love Is Blind is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop Wednesdays.
